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Stephanie Loftin, right, and her client inside the Long Beach Courthouse minutes after a judge dismissed his lewd conduct case because it was discriminatory enforcement and prosecution. Photo: Courtesy of Reba Birmingham.

Patrons from The Patch, a gay bar in Wilmington owned at the time by Long Beach resident Lee Glaze, hold bouquets outside the Los Angeles Police Department Harbor Station during the 1968 “flower power” protest against police harassment. The protest is a significant milestone in gay history. It took place a year before the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City. Photo courtesy of Lee Glaze.

LONG BEACH – A former bar owner who was at the dawn of the LGBT civil rights movement by protesting Los Angeles police harassment and an attorney who won a discrimination case against Long Beach police will be the latest inductees to Equality Plaza at Harvey Milk Promenade Park.

A total of four community leaders will have their names added to plaques in the plaza, which was created to recognize local LGBTQ community leaders who have battled discrimination and advocated for equal rights and historic preservation.

Rory Moroney. fought the Long Beach Police Department and won. The police arrested him for lewd conduct, but a judge on Friday dismissed the case and said the police discriminate against gay men in their lewd conduct sting operations.(Photo by Brittany Murray / SCNG)

LONG BEACH – A superior court judge Friday made scathing statements about the Long Beach Police Department’s treatment of gay men in the community, saying in a ruling over a lewd conduct case that the department is hostile and intentionally targets gay men, and that the prosecutor’s office portrays them as “sexual deviants and pedophiles.”

Case dismissed

In his ruling, Long Beach Superior Court Judge Halim Dhanidina dismissed the case against Rory Moroney, 50, of Long Beach, who was arrested Oct. 15, 2014, at Recreation Park and charged with one count of misdemeanor indecent exposure and one count of lewd conduct. If Moroney would have been convicted of indecent exposure, he would have been required to register as a sex offender for life.

A Bay Area attorney is challenging a Long Beach police vice unit decoy in a lewd conduct sting operation targeting a gay man – and he hopes the case, being heard Friday in Long Beach, will end the practice. Courtesy photo.

LONG BEACH – A Bay Area attorney is challenging a Long Beach police vice unit decoy in a lewd conduct sting operation targeting a gay man – and he hopes the case, being heard Friday in Long Beach, will end the practice.